Sara Kennedy

Language awareness and second language pronunciation: a classroom study

We examined the relationship between the quality of second language (L2) learners’ language awareness (as shown through dialogue journal entries) and the quality of their L2 pronunciation (as assessed through listener-based ratings of accentedness, comprehensibility, and fluency). The participants were 10 students enrolled in a 13-week university-level pronunciation course focusing on the suprasegmental aspects of English. We evaluated the students’ pronunciation during week 1 and week 11 of class and examined weekly dialogue journal entries written by the students over 10 weeks for evidence of language awareness. We analysed the comments for aspects of language awareness which were quantitative (language learning as assimilating a set of discrete items) and qualitative (language learning as a meaningful context in which learning occurs). We found a relationship between the students’ pronunciation ratings and the number of qualitative (not quantitative) language awareness comments, such that higher pronunciation ratings were associated with a greater number of qualitative language awareness comments. We also found that the students who produced the most qualitative language awareness comments were those who reported the largest amount of L2 listening done outside of class. We discuss the results in light of the role of language awareness in L2 pronunciation learning.

Language awareness and perception of connected speech in a second language

To be effective second or additional language (L2) listeners, learners should be aware of typical processes in connected L2 speech (e.g. linking). This longitudinal study explored how learners’ developing ability to perceive connected L2 speech was related to the quality of their language awareness. Thirty-two learners of L2 French at a university in Quebec, Canada, took a course focusing on improving learners’ abilities to understand and decode standard and familiar connected speech processes in French. Learners engaged in numerous activities to raise their awareness of and to practise perception of connected speech processes. They also completed weekly journal entries about their learning experiences and language use. Results showed that learners with the most improved perception did not focus on rehearsing knowledge about connected speech processes, but focused on how to use that knowledge to extract meaning from speech. Results are discussed in relation to the relationship between L2 listening and different types of awareness.

Flawed self-assessment: Investigating self- and other-perception of second language speech

This study targeted the relationship between self- and other-assessment of accentedness and comprehensibility in second language (L2) speech, extending prior social and cognitive research documenting weak or non-existing links between peoples self-assessment and objective measures of performance. Results of two experiments (N = 134) revealed mostly inaccurate self-assessment: speakers at the low end of the accentedness and comprehensibility scales overestimated their performance; speakers at the high end of each scale underestimated it. For both accent and comprehensibility, discrepancies in self- versus other-assessment were associated with listener-rated measures of phonological accuracy and temporal fluency but not with listener-rated measures of lexical appropriateness and richness, grammatical accuracy and complexity, or discourse structure. Findings suggest that inaccurate self-assessment is linked to the inherent complexity of L2 perception and production as cognitive skills and point to several ways of helping L2 speakers align or calibrate their self-assessment with their actual performance.

Language awareness: a world of perspectives

We are pleased to present this special issue of Language Awareness. The papers in this issue reflect the wide variety of presentations given at the 11 International Conference of the Association for Language Awareness, held at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, July 2012. The theme, “Language Awareness for our Multicultural World”, attracted over 225 participants from around the world, with a significant number of firsttime participants from the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia, several of whom were supported financially by the Association for Language Awareness (ALA). The conference was also supported by grants from ALA, Concordia University, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. We would like to thank the conference participants and volunteers for a wonderfully stimulating and enjoyable three days. The papers in this special issue cover a range of perspectives on language awareness. Patsy Lightbown opened the conference with the Eric Hawkins Lecture, dedicated to one of the founders of the Association for Language Awareness. In her paper, she describes how her extensive program of research has informed her insights into the acquisition of other languages. She reviews a variety of instructional approaches and contexts for secondand foreign-language acquisition. These approaches are examined for their different characteristics, especially with respect to distribution of time. Finally, Lightbown identifies features of effective programs for learning a second or foreign language. In the paper based on her plenary talk, Carmen Mu~noz examines the language awareness of young Catalan-Spanish learners of English. Bringing together cross-sectional and longitudinal interview data, Mu~noz explores changes in their beliefs about themselves as learners, about language learning, and about the learning situation as they moved through primary school. Her paper makes an important contribution to our understanding of young learners’ views about foreign language learning. The next three papers are concerned with the awareness of adult learners of English. To investigate the relationship between the meanings and the use of common conventional expressions, Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig modified the Vocabulary Knowledge Scale and administered it to university students enrolled in four levels of intensive English. She describes the development of the instrument and explains how it can be used to supplement other tasks in pragmatics research. Joan Carles Mora, Youssef Rochdi, and Hanna Kivist€o de Souza explore the phonological side of language awareness. Mora et al. use a delayed mimicry task to show that, when asked to produce English, Spanish, and English-accented Spanish, first language (L1) Spanish learners of English can produce language-appropriate values for voice onset time, thus showing implicit phonological awareness of this non-distinctive phonetic difference between English and Spanish. Zhoulin Ruan presents his study of metacognitive awareness with participants who have been under-represented in language awareness research to date: Chinese university students writing in English. Using a metacognition framework with three elements, Ruan interviews over 50 students prior to an English writing course and finds that the students view writing in English as a structured task to complete rather than as a process of regulating their own cognition and effort.

Using stimulated recall to explore the use of communication strategies in English lingua franca interactions

Abstract In this study, the communication strategy use of two pairs of English as a lingua franca (ELF) users was explored in relation to two contextual factors, the communicative goal and the ELF users’ thoughts and feelings about the interactions. The ELF users were video-recorded engaging in researcher-designed tasks which required sharing information to achieve a joint goal. Subsequent stimulated recall with individual speakers targeted instances of potential or actual difficulties in understanding. Recordings and transcripts of the paired tasks and stimulated recall were used to identify communication strategies used to address difficulties in understanding. Results showed that overall, 11 different strategy types were seen across both pairs of speakers. However, the pair which achieved the shared goal showed a different pattern of strategy use and of interaction than the pair which did not achieve the shared goal. The two pairs also differed in how they attributed responsibility for successful communication. These findings, discussed in the context of previous ELF communication strategy research, highlight benefits of investigating interlocutors’ contemporaneous thoughts and feelings and the ways in which communication strategies are used during interactions.

Research timeline: Second language communication strategies

Speakers of a second language (L2), regardless of proficiency level, communicate for specific purposes. For example, an L2 speaker of English may wish to build rapport with a co-worker by chatting about the weather. The speaker will draw on various resources to accomplish her communicative purposes. For instance, the speaker may say ‘falling ice’ if she has forgotten the word ‘hail’ or may repeat the last few words of her interlocutors utterance to show that she is listening and engaged. The term communication strategies (CSs) refers to the strategic use of various resources (both linguistic and non-linguistic) for communicative purposes. While speakers also use CSs in their native languages (L1s), research on L2 CS use is particularly interesting because speakers’ L2 linguistic resources and the associated cognitive processes are typically less developed, compared to those in their L1. Therefore, for L2 users to accomplish their communicative purposes in the L2, it is important that they effectively use the resources available to them. This research timeline presents key developments in theoretical understanding and empirical research targeting L2 CSs, mainly in oral communication. The timeline places particular emphasis on the evolution of theoretical approaches to the study of CSs and the consequent expansion of research in terms of the nature of participants, speech samples, and analytical tools used.

LONGITUDINAL CHANGES IN THE USE OF PARATONES IN L2 ENGLISH SPEECH BY MANDARIN SPEAKERS

First language (L1) English speakers have been observed to organize their oral discourse into macro-units analogous to paragraphs in writing. These units, called paratones (BROWN, 1977) or phonological paragraphs (TENCH, 1996; THOMPSON, 2003), are characterized by extra high pitch at the beginning of a new discourse topic (YULE, 1980). The present study investigated how seven second language (L2) graduate students’ use of paratones developed naturalistically during their first six months immersed in an L2 environment. The participants, all L1 speakers of Mandarin, were recorded delivering four short academic presentations at approximately two-month intervals. Presentations given by two native English speakers were also analyzed for comparison. Overall, the L2 participants’ pitch peaks at topic shifts were considerably less prominent than those observed in the native-speaker data. Only one participant’s use of paratones seemed to change over time, showing improvement from the beginning to the end of the study.